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900 hostages freed in Cameroon

The Cameroon Army said Wednesday it has freed 900 Boko Haram hostages and killed 100 of the group’s fighters during a three-day raid last week.

A government spokesman says joint forces from the nations of Cameroon, Nigeria, Chad and Benin killed more than 100 militant fighters and arrested 100 others in a three-day operation that unfolded in the Sambisa Forest over the weekend. The forest straddles northeastern Nigeria and Cameroon, and the Lake Chad area.

“A special clean-up operation from November 26 to 28” against Boko Haram in the border area with Nigeria “neutralized more than 100 jihadists,” Defense Minister Joseph Beti Assomo said in a statement broadcast on national radio, AFP reported.

The report, which AFP says could not be independently confirmed, comes as two female suicide bombers detonated explosives, killing at least six people.

Midjiyawa Bakary said Wednesday that soldiers killed a third suicide bomber before she attacked. He said the attackers came from Nigeria into the border town of Waza late Tuesday.

Senior military official Col. Jacob Kodji said Nigeria’s Boko Haram extremists have been using teenage suicide bombers and planting land mines.

He said two Cameroonian soldiers were killed Monday by a land mine planted by militants in the village of Gangse in northern Cameroon. Boko Haram has expanded attacks into Cameroon, Chad and Niger — all countries contributing troops to a regional force intended to wipe out the extremists.